The World Bank estimates that 1.4 billion adults globally remain unbanked. At the same time, across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, millions of people are actively saving, borrowing, and managing money through informal systems.
Savings groups alone now serve over 20 million members globally, with collective savings exceeding $11.5 billion. These groups consistently demonstrate financial discipline. Members grow income, invest in businesses, manage seasonal cash flow, and build safety nets for emergencies.
The system works. The gap is visibility. Most of this financial activity is not captured within the formal financial system. It is structured and reliable, but it is not recognized in a way that translates into access to formal financial services.
This is the gap DreamStart Labs set out to address.
Building DreamSave
In 2016, our founders, Henrik Esbensen and Wes Wasson, left California for Tanzania to understand the ways of savings groups.
They worked directly with groups for nearly two years. They attended meetings, observed how savings were recorded, how loans were issued, how repayment was enforced, and how accountability was maintained. They learned the VSLA methodology in practice, not in theory.
They saw that savings groups are not loosely organized. They are structured financial systems built on consistency, trust, and shared accountability.
That understanding became the foundation of DreamStart Labs.
From that point, the focus shifted from learning to building. By 2019, alongside a growing team that included early contributors like Jennie Vader and many others, the first working prototype of DreamSave was developed and tested directly with savings groups.
DreamSave was designed to mirror existing group processes. Groups use it to record savings, track loans, manage meetings, run calculations, and complete their cycles. It improves accuracy, reduces errors, and increases transparency within the group.
Over time, DreamSave evolved based on real usage. Today, DreamSave supports more than 40,000 groups and over 850,000 members across 37 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. It has processed tens of millions of transactions, capturing financial activity that would otherwise remain undocumented.
The product has improved significantly over the years. The user interface has been refined to be simpler and easier to navigate. User experience has been adjusted to align with how groups actually operate. The platform works offline, recognizing that connectivity cannot be assumed. It requires only one smartphone per group, which reflects the realities of device access.
DreamSave also contributes to digital literacy. For many group members, this is their first time interacting consistently with a smartphone. Through using the platform, they learn how to navigate digital tools, interact with structured systems, and build confidence in using technology beyond the app.
Working Within an Ecosystem
DreamStart Labs operates within an ecosystem.
The company works with NGOs, implementing partners, and organizations that form and support savings groups as part of livelihood and financial inclusion programs. These include World Vision, CARE, Tearfund, Opportunity International, VisionFund, CRS, Women for Women International, Global Widows Fund, and many others.
Through these partnerships, DreamSave is deployed within real programs. Groups are trained, onboarded, and supported through facilitators, ensuring that digitization is integrated into their existing processes. To support these partners, DreamInsights was developed.
DreamInsights provides organizations with visibility into the performance of their groups. Partners can monitor savings levels, track loan activity, assess repayment rates, measure meeting frequency, and evaluate financial resilience. It also allows them to understand whether their programs are effectively supporting groups in reaching financial stability.
This creates a continuous feedback loop between groups, partners, and the system itself.
As the system matured, a new question became central. If digitization creates visibility, what comes next? The end goal is access to formal financial services. This is where DreamLink comes in.
DreamLink connects savings groups to financial service providers using the data generated through DreamSave. It creates eligibility criteria based on group-level performance, including savings consistency, repayment behavior, financial discipline, and basic KYC indicators.
This information is presented to financial institutions, enabling them to assess group viability and design financial products such as loans and insurance for groups within specific geographies. DreamLink moves groups from onboarding and digitization to sustained usage and ultimately to financial linkage. It is part of a broader system where groups move from training, to adoption, to continuous usage, and finally to access to formal financial services.
Ten Years of Building DreamStart Labs
The products and processes have been recognized globally. DreamSave placed third in the Vodafone Wireless Innovation Project and received a $100,000 award from the Vodafone Americas Foundation. DreamStart Labs was later named to the Inclusive Fintech 50, recognizing leading fintech companies advancing financial inclusion.
In 2021, DreamSave received four Fast Company World Changing Ideas Awards, including Best App and Best Developing World Technology, selected from thousands of global entries. In 2023, DreamSave 2.0 received additional recognition, including Best Finance App and Best Developing World Technology.
The company has also received recognition for digital banking innovation and social impact across multiple platforms.
In 2026, DreamStart Labs was recognized as a Leading Social Impact FinTech Company, reflecting its continued contribution to financial inclusion at scale.
Beyond awards, independent research has validated the impact of this work. Studies examining DreamSave’s use in savings groups have shown improvements in transparency, record accuracy, and financial management. Pilot programs with partners have demonstrated high satisfaction rates among group members, improved trust within groups, and strong potential for connecting savings groups to formal financial services.
This progress is driven by people. The engineering team builds and maintains the infrastructure that supports thousands of groups across multiple environments. Under the leadership of CTO Premuditha Perera, the focus has been on creating systems that are stable, scalable, and adaptable to real-world conditions.
The customer success team works directly with partners and facilitators to ensure that the tools are adopted and used consistently. They support onboarding, training, and ongoing engagement, ensuring that the product translates into real impact.
Across operations, legal, finance, and marketing, each team contributes to the systems that sustain DreamStart Labs.
And at the center of everything are the savings group members. Their adoption, consistency, and feedback continue to shape how the products evolve.
To mark ten years, DreamStart Labs returned to Tanzania.
The anniversary was spent with girls at Lilian Kibo Secondary School. This decision reflects both the origin and the future of the work. The company began by learning from savings groups in Tanzania. Ten years later, it returned to invest in the next generation.
The team engaged with students on financial literacy, future readiness, and how technology can shape opportunity. These conversations reflect a broader belief that has guided the work from the beginning:
Talent is everywhere. Access is not.
Ten years is a milestone. It reflects sustained work, continuous learning, and consistent iteration. From early fieldwork in Tanzania to supporting tens of thousands of groups across 37 countries, DreamStart Labs has built systems that reflect real-world conditions and enable financial inclusion.
It is not only about what has been achieved. It is about how it has been built.
The communities who trusted the process.
The partners who supported the work.
The teams who built the infrastructure.
The future of financial inclusion will not be built by one organization. It will be built by people. And this work continues.